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  Liberty's Torch - The Great...

  Elizabeth Mitchell

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  “Turns out that what you thought you knew about Lady Liberty is dead wrong. Learn the truth in this fascinating account.” —O, The Oprah Magazine   The Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable monuments in the world, a powerful symbol of freedom and the American dream. For decades, the myth has persisted that the statue was a grand gift from France, but now Liberty’s Torch reveals how she was in fact the pet project of one quixotic and visionary French sculptor, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi. Bartholdi not only forged this 151-foot-tall colossus in a workshop in Paris and transported her across the ocean, but battled to raise money for the statue and make her a reality.   A young sculptor inspired by a trip to Egypt where he saw the pyramids and Sphinx, he traveled to America, carrying with him the idea of a colossal statue of a woman. There he enlisted the help of notable people of the age—including Ulysses S. Grant, Joseph Pulitzer, Victor Hugo, Gustave Eiffel, and Thomas Edison—to help his scheme. He also came up with inventive ideas to raise money, including exhibiting the torch at the Philadelphia world’s fair and charging people to climb up inside. While the French and American governments dithered, Bartholdi made the statue a reality by his own entrepreneurship, vision, and determination.   “By explaining Liberty’s tortured history and resurrecting Bartholdi’s indomitable spirit, Mitchell has done a great service. This is narrative history, well told. It is history that connects us to our past and—hopefully—to our future.” —Los Angeles Times

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  I Hate Men

  Pauline Harmange

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  The feminist book they tried to ban in France‘A delightful book’ Roxane Gay 
  Women, especially feminists and lesbians, have long been accused of hating men. Our instinct is to deny it at all costs. (After all, women have been burnt at the stake for admitting to less.) 
  But what if mistrusting men, disliking men – and yes, maybe even hating men – is, in fact, a useful response to sexism? What if such a response offers a way out of oppression, a means of resistance? What if it even offers a path to joy, solidarity and sisterhood? 
  In this sparkling essay, as mischievous and provocative as it is urgent and serious, Pauline Harmange interrogates modern attitudes to feminism and makes a rallying cry for women to find a greater love for each other – and themselves.

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  The Totorore Voyage - "One of...

  Gerry Clark

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  `I love the sea, I love the birds, I love adventure. In what better way could I indulge myself, in these later years of my life, than to undertake an expedition in the great Southern Ocean? In 1983 at the age of 56, Gerry Clark set out from New Zealand in his 10 metre home built wooden yacht to circumnavigate Antarctica in a quest for new information about seabirds. In this graphic account of the ensuing 3 year 8 month voyage, he describes his adventures in some of the remotest, wildest and most spectacularly beautiful parts of the world. 
  `Below the clouds which hid the mountain peaks, the icefields above the glacier shone with a weird, mauvish light. There are many strange icebergs: a cathedral, a fine gothic arch, and a huge and voluptuous female torso. 
  Gerry and his crew members visited Robinson Crusoe Island, little known islands in the Chilean Archipelago, and the infamous Cape Horn, where they camped on the very peak to make important bird discoveries. They spent many months sailing around the Falklands and South Georgia, and narrowly escaped being trapped by pack ice on a trip to the Antarctic Peninsula. Sailing from South Georgia to Punta Arenas, Totorore was dismasted; and again between Cape Town and Marion Island. On this occasion Gerry had to cut the mast and rigging adrift. He continued alone under jury-rig, and Totorore rolled five times in two of the most terrifying storms yet encountered. 
  With the engine out of action and the jury-mast gone, the voyage became a desperate struggle for survival ending with Totorore limping into Fremantle two and a half months later. 
  In this remarkable adventure story of resilience and resourcefulness in the face of perils and disappointments, we share the author's determination to survive and his exhilaration at each new discovery. It's an enthralling story for anyone interested in the sea and the birdlife of the Southern Oceans.

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  On Whale Island - Notes From a...

  Daniel Hays

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  As chronicled in the bestselling book My Old Man and the Sea, the thirst for living an unconventional life led Daniel Hays to sail around Cape Horn with his father in a boat they built themselves.Thinking his wanderlust satisfied, Hays married and settled down, only to find himself restless for adventure once again. On Whale Island tells the story of how he packed up three boatloads of supplies, his wife, stepson, and two dogs and moved to a remote island off the coast of Nova Scotia, fulfilling a lifelong fantasy of escaping from the confines of civilization and living by his wits.On Whale Island tells three stories. In the foreground, we see Daniel who, not unlike one of Peter Pan's Lost Boys, joyfully lives this permanent boy's life. He generates electricity from solar power, creates a toilet seat from whale vertebra, and greets every storm with enthusiasm. But while Daniel is building windmills and funneling rainwater for showers, his spirited son feels isolated and his wife longs for the life they left behind.Funny, tender, and filled with the details of an unconventional life, this is the story of how the Hays family lived on Whale Island, and how, finally, they had to leave.

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  Invasion Diary

  Richard Tregaskis

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  The Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy in 1943 were bloody and pivotal, securing the Mediterranean, capitalizing on the overthrow of Mussolini, and pinning down German troops that could have been used on the Russian Front or in France after D-Day. The men who made the Allied victories in Sicily and Italy possible-soldiers and officers, bombardiers and drivers, doctors and generals-are honored and remembered in these pages by famed war correspondent Richard Tregaskis. His experiences take him from bomb-bay doors over Rome, to the chaotic front lines in Italy, where he nearly died from a shrapnel wound. The uniquely American features of the Second World War are unforgettably inscribed through the pen of Richard Tregaskis.

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  Abraham Lincoln: A Press...

  Herbert Mitgang

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  “To say he is ugly is nothing. To add that his figure is grotesque is to convey no adequate impression.” “He is destined to occupy in history…a quaintness, originality, courage, honesty, magnanimity and popular force of character such as have never heretofore…” These starkly different 19th century newspaper depictions describe one and the same man: Abraham Lincoln. Nearly 150 years after his death, Lincoln is universally considered our most beloved U.S. president. Yet in his own time, the reception he received at the hands of journalists was far more mixed. In this essential volume, noted Lincoln scholar Herbert Mitgang has painstakingly gathered the most thorough, wide-ranging collection of actual newspaper accounts that show how Lincoln was portrayed by northern, southern, and foreign newspapers. It reveals a far more beleaguered, less godlike, and finally a richer Lincoln than has come through many other biographies. While often revered in print, for example, he was just as often crucified, even by some newspapers in his home state of Illinois that portrayed him throughout his career as a joker instead of a thinker. Most shockingly, perhaps, one Houston paper wrote after his assassination: “From now until God’s judgment day, the minds of men will not cease to thrill at the killing of Abraham Lincoln.” For those only familiar with the “retouched” versions of Lincoln’s life, Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait offers an often surprising and wholly unsanitized account of how his contemporaries actually saw him before, during, and after the Civil War. It is must read for the serious scholar and Lincoln buff alike.

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